Bleed-through is a type of noise or distortion that is specific to scanned images of double-sided documents. When one side of a double-sided document is scanned, features on the opposite side of the document can be captured. These features appear as artifacts in the scanned digital image, manifested as phantoms of text characters and other dark features from the other side. Bleed-through can also be caused by documents underlying the scanned document. Dark features from these underlying documents can bleed through during scanning.
Bleed-through can reduce visual quality of a digital image. The bleed-through can also reduce compressibility of a digital image. Reducing the compressibility increases the cost of storing and transmitting digital images.